


something like forgiveness

by darthpumpkinspice



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dom/sub Undertones, Episode: s05e13 Why We Fight, M/M, POV Second Person, Praise Kink, Sam Lawson lives, Self-Hatred, mentions of period typical homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:42:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27539335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthpumpkinspice/pseuds/darthpumpkinspice
Summary: You're alive, although by all rights you should be dust.  You don’t understand. You’ve all but begged for death, as loudly and as explicitly as your pride and the lingering traces of old Catholic guilt will allow.
Relationships: Sam Lawson/Angel
Kudos: 7





	something like forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> been doing a rewatch of AtS, and came back to this episode! imho Sam Lawson was a criminally underused character in the show, and so with the help of some red bull i decided to go ahead and crank this thing out! have no clue whether or not this is objectively good lol but i had such a fun time writing this - i hope ya'll enjoy! feel free to drop a kudo or a comment if ya do!

You’re still here. This realization hits you like a mallet, smacking you upside the head until you feel fuzzy and stupid and faintly ashamed of your own existence. You’ve played out this confrontation a thousand times in your mind at this point, and yes, in some of those simulations you’ve come out the unintended victor. But you’d always thought this unexpected second chance would provoke some kind of epiphany within you, unlock some deep wellspring of self-reflection. You’d pictured yourself on the receiving end of some grand and delicate truth about the nature of existence, of uncovering some revelation about the myriad of strange and unseen choices that pull a person towards a single moment, as inexorably as gravity, as forcefully as a hidden riptide. Yeah. Something poetic like that, a pretty little jewel of a thought that you could turn around in your mind to examine at your leisure, letting yourself get absorbed in its majesty. 

But these type of circumstances – the ones where you’re drowning in fear and entirely too cognizant of the mathematical probability of certain death - have never been a mechanism for your catharsis before. You weren’t steered any closer to your own personal truth in the submarine, and you don’t know why you held on to some naïve, stupid hope that _now_ would’ve been any different. If these decades have taught you nothing else, it is that you, Sam Lawson, are fundamentally a creature of habit. And so instead, the only thing that goes through your undead brain is the word _fuck_ – a single, solitary steam-engine of a thought that plows through any others in its path.

A few seconds tick by and, mercifully, _fuck_ starts to lose some of its earlier momentum, enough at least to make room for a couple stray fragments of other thoughts.

So. You’re alive. In a manner of speaking, of course – your heart is still a dead lump taking up space in your ribcage, and your blood sits cold and sluggish in your veins. But you can still move and blink and think these stupid thoughts, so… you’re alive. And you loathe to be alive in the way your kind loath the touch of sunshine on their skin. You hate to inhabit this body that’s achieved a horrible truce between man and demon: a truce you never signed off on, and one you want no part of anymore.

It is only natural that when you think of the beast taking up residence inside of you, you find your gaze drawn to Him, your capricious God that gave you death and a cursed resurrection, and now denies you release from the suffering he’s inflicted upon you. You don’t understand. You’ve all but _begged_ for death, as loudly and as explicitly as your pride and the lingering traces of old Catholic guilt will allow. You’ve been gracious enough to give him a _motive_ by endangering his crew, and you presented him with that stake that now lies discarded on the ground beside you. _Motives, means, and opportunity_. What else can he possibly need? You’ve all but done his work for him, practically thrown yourself into his arms, as wanton as a drunken harlot.

You stare at him, too outraged and full of despair to muster the words to speak. You declare your anger with your expression instead, and condemn him with your eyes. For a second, your sire has the decency to look faintly ashamed, and your eyes drift down and away of their own volition, unable to stomach the sight of that weakness on him. You almost regret coming here, if only for having to witness such an emotion crossing his features. It looks far too human on him, makes him look… fallible. Conflicted. This is not how you want to think of him – he is your creator and your destroyer, he is something unreasonable and implacable, and even during his tenure eating vermin in the sewers, he was and is _entirely_ beyond you.

This is your Devil and your God, your damnation and your salvation in one. He is as beautiful as inevitability; he is both as alien and as horrifyingly familiar as death. You do not want to think of him as _human_ , as capable of feeling regret and of making mistakes. Because if so… that would open a door to a particularly unpleasant possibility that before now, you’d gone a lifetime dutifully avoiding contemplating: that he might’ve, could’ve, made a _different_ choice with _you_. He could’ve killed you on the spot once you had risen, or perhaps swam with you on your mad dash back to dry land. That he could’ve made _any number_ of choices, beyond the one he did: the one where you were condemned to this un-life alone. 

With that ugly thought now running loose in your mind, you behold the face of your sire with new eyes – try to look at him as a man of flesh and bone and fallibility. His hair is slightly out of place from your skirmish, and his eyes flicker with something caught between sorrow and pain. Your stomach sinks further at the sight of it. This is _really_ not how you’d imagined this moment: this creature before you is not the same one you’d elevated to godhood in your memories and your fantasies. He was _supposed_ to be an immovable object, a mountain, your cruel and righteous punishment personified. You cannot decide if you are more disappointed or relieved that in the end, he is more similar to _you_ than anything else.

 _Finally_ your mouth opens, and your tongue decides at last to obey you. You’ve always had a head for numbers, but you’d gotten poor marks on everything else, and you’ve only proved halfway eloquent on rare, usually drunk, moments. Your imagination fails you now as it has too many times before. The first question you ask is simple, due to nothing more than the sheer virtue of you being utterly inadequate at describing the enormity of grief and confusion coursing through you. “ _Why_?”

Angel doesn’t respond. Instead, he reaches out to clasp you on the shoulder. The movement is sudden enough that you flinch against his touch. He doesn’t withdraw his hand, but he does grant you the small mercy of squeezing comfortingly. You lean into it despite yourself, resenting how _good_ even that miniscule affection feels. “Come with me,” he tells you.

The command is given mildly, and it’s a poor substitute for a _mission_ you’d demanded of him earlier, but it’s better than nothing, and even a hollow purpose serves to keep the emptiness inside of you at bay. So you follow your sire, leaving behind shattered glass and his faintly bruised crew, feeling a disconcerting sense of déjà vu as you realize that once again you’re right on his heel like a puppy, waiting for him to give you a fresh set of orders. But as much as you might want it to be, _this_ isn’t the sub, and you aren’t an optimistic young ensign anymore, emboldened with patriotic zeal and willing to sacrifice yourself for the good of your country. For a few glorious moments back then, you were the sort of hero you’d see on the news reels. It’s funny how _much_ the years have stripped away from you. You’d rather not reflect on the fact that just a few minutes prior you’d tried to offer up your life on the altar of nothing more _glorious_ than your own weariness. Another testament to your weakness: if you are being honest with yourself, you will admit that you have been _weary_ since 1943. By now, that sensation has long since metastasized inside of you, settling into the very marrows of your bones until it has become one with your being. You cannot divorce yourself from your own disillusionment, nor can you remember a time before you’d been swallowed by this loneliness and quiet desolation.

Angel places a hand between your shoulder blades, guiding you forward into a room that’s so spellbindingly dazzling it almost makes you forget it’s located at the penthouse suite of Evil Incorporated. It’s covered in rich, dark wood – _mahogany_ , you guess blindly, with no reference point to know if you’re right or not – and it’s suffused with warm light that filters through heavy blinds. You blink at the realization that it’s already morning.

“You really did well for yourself, chief,” you say to him. It’s intended to be insulting, a dig at the devil’s bargain that secured these accommodations for him, but you’re still feeling too defeated to inject much more than the bare minimum of derision into your tone.

His face twists and he gives an awkward shrug. “One way of looking at it.”

“How can you stand this?” you ask him. “With your-” you hesitate. You don’t even want to _think_ of the word again, let alone shape it into existence with your tongue. You end up spitting it out like a projectile dart, with enough needless venom that Angel looks at you askance. Now given name, the word hovers in the air between you – that insurmountable, terrible difference separating you from your sire. _Soul_. The temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees.

That perfect jaw of his tightens, and for a beautiful, delirious moment you think he might finally lose his temper, crack through this strange cool that’s come over him in the aftermath of your brief battle. But instead, he lets out a long, deep sigh, and re-evaluates you. There’s some calculation going on in his mind that you can only speculate at, but before you can grow too paranoid his face smooths over – a decision clearly made. He meets your gaze and there is compassion in those eyes, folded around steel.

“Let me show you something,” he says.

There’s no question there, but you nod anyway, some old need to please resurfacing in the presence of him.

He moves in your direction, and startled, you stumble back, tripping over your own feet in a particularly un-vampiric display of clumsiness. His eyes shine with silent laughter at your expense, and he reaches past you to thumb some control buried into the wood of the window frame.

The blinds open and you shrink back automatically, expecting the inevitable burn. But you do yourself some credit – you don’t try to hide or skitter away into the shadows. You stand as straight-backed as any dutiful soldier, and you welcome the pain the light promises. But instead, there is only a gentle warmth that slowly blossoms along your exposed flesh, and your skin tingles pleasantly with the novelty of it. You don’t intend to, but your eyes slip closed and you spread out your arms, basking in the sweet kiss of solar heat. In the background, you hear Angel babble proudly about how the glass has been treated by the best sorcerers and technicians his firm has at their disposal… but you’re only half-listening, at best. 

It has been decades since you’ve been touched by sunshine, and it brings back memories you’d forgotten you’d still possessed. Images flash through your mind: long, lazy summer days spent causing trouble with friends, or watching the sunset with some girl from school. A face floats up to you, and abruptly you remember the pink lipstick Betty Jones used to favor, and how it seemed to glitter so alluringly under the light of the sinking sun. You remember her hair, lustrous and golden as a day. And – you did not mean to – but you remember Bobby Anders too, of tussling with him under a blazing noon sun and the way his eyes shone almost painfully blue in the light. You’d pinned him down and he’d stared up at you with something petrifyingly close to yearning in those sky-bright eyes, and you’d wanted to kiss him too, just as you’d kissed Betty, but you never did – scared of someone seeing you, scared of what it would mean for you if you gave in to those impulses. Back then, you figured if you never acted on those burgeoning desires of yours, never gave them a name, they would somehow cease to exist. And, in a common enough occurrence that would grow to be a running theme in your life – you were wrong.

You are grateful for this aspect of your vampirism – being cursed to feed off the blood of the living had certainly done a good job of putting your other ‘issues’ in perspective. It seems so tame in comparison now- that supposed immorality you’d spent so much of your adolescence worrying about. Wanting to fuck men as well as women no longer seems like such a sin when compared to your actual crimes.

With the heat of the sun still wrapped around you like a lover’s embrace, you open your eyes and pivot back to Angel, resenting yourself for your lack of self-control as you smile at him. The expression _must_ look more natural than it feels, for his face clears and suddenly he’s smiling back at you, an unrestrained, brilliant grin that’s almost unfairly endearing. You try to blame the warm rush in your chest on the hot California sunlight, but the self-deception falters when that same warmth ripples down into your stomach, dropping through until it reaches your groin.

You clench your jaw, grinding your molars together as if that will do jackshit for the swiftly growing erection that’s well on its way to being obvious. Fortunately, Angel’s eyes are entirely fixed on your face. He sees the change that goes through your expression, and his smile fades.

“What do you want, son?” he asks you tiredly. He waves his hand before you have the chance to respond, his face scrunching with displeasure. “And none of that _mission_ crap, alright? Tell me what you _want_. Is it just to die? Because you don’t actually need me for that.” He gestures to the window, to the slowly awakening city beyond. “You could’ve been dust decades ago if that’s what you _wanted_ , so… I wager a guess you had something _else_ in mind when you chose to come here.”

“I did want to die,” you argue bitterly. You feel a bit like a child now, petulant about some trivial matter that meant the world to you moments ago, and now, in retrospect, seems wildly foolish.

He barks out a joyless laugh. “Oh I believe you. I just don’t think that’s all this is.” The steel in his eyes recedes, and the tight set of his mouth softens. “We don’t… _have_ to talk about it, son,” he says gently. You wish he’d stop using that word to describe you. It’s old-fashioned and affectionate in a way you think you like in a way that’s just south of decent. Oblivious to your personal dilemma, Angel continues on, “I’d just like to know what you want.”

Frankly, _want_ is not something you’ve been privileged enough to contemplate often. Want is another luxury from a past life, another thing stolen by your transformation. Other vampires _want:_ you have seen it, seen their bloodlust, their hunger for chaos and violence, their insatiable appetites for rape and murder and torture. But not you. Whatever stain Angel’s soul left on you has deprived you of that capacity to truly enjoy this existence; you look at him and process his question as you think just how deeply, how profoundly, you have been ruined by him. You sense his impatience, and so you lick your lips, trying muster some workable answer from your churning thoughts. When did discipline, your most reliable skill, become so hard for you? It, and all your other mental faculties, seems to have evaporated in the dark heat of Angel’s gaze.

“I don’t know,” you say reluctantly.

Angel comes another half-step towards you, and you retreat until your back is nearly flush with the glass of the window. “Is that the truth?” he asks softly, a strange quality to his tone that you don’t know whether to interpret as a threat or as sincere concern.

It was the truth when you said it, but now pressed so close to your sire, your cock still half-hard, you admit that there is another, uglier truth too. What you want –

“You,” you blurt out before you can think to stop yourself.

Angel looks torn between amusement and bewilderment. “What about me?”

If you could still blush, you’d be burning red as a Christmas light right now. “I want you,” you grind out, wishing again – and more acutely than before – for the mercy of death as Angel stares at you, slow realization dawning on him.

Without a word, Angel pushes himself ever-so-slightly closer, planting his hands on the window around your shoulders, as his thigh grazes against your cock, which has now returned to full-mast. He smells good – like smoke and oak and the faintest scent of gasoline, and helplessly, you stifle a plaintive sound as you grind up against his leg.

“Tell me what you want,” he repeats, his voice now firm with command.

You want him, and you hate yourself for that. You hate yourself for loving him; hate yourself for how desperately you have craved his attention, his regard.

“Please,” you whisper, your voice rough with need. You buck into his leg again, try to rut against it. The friction is just enough to make you desperate, but not nearly enough to get you edging anywhere in the vicinity of release. “I want you.”

He must think you so pathetic, but you have already exhausted your capacity for shame. You cannot find anymore to spare.

Angel’s eyes are as dark as a storm. “Then you’ll have me,” he promises, low and husky. A shiver lances down your spine, and your cock, impossibly, grows even stiffer. He jerks his head in the direction of a shadowed room, the door slightly ajar. “Bed’s in there, Lawson. Be undressed by the time I come in.” His arms don’t budge from their position, and you’re forced to slip underneath them to get out.

You enter the bedroom, letting your hands slide through silk sheets, rubbing the fabric to steady yourself. It does not help. Your hands tremble as you remove your jacket, and it takes you far longer to unbutton your shirt than it ordinarily would. By the time you’ve shucked off your socks you hear heavy footfalls approaching the door, and you scramble to tear off your boxers before he enters. The door swings open, and Angel, wreathed in the golden sunlight of the room beyond and looking every bit like his namesake, stares at your nudity. Belatedly, you wonder if perhaps he didn’t mean for you to undress quite so _completely_ but it’s too late now. Angel’s eyes roam up and down your figure, lingering on your chest and arms, before finally settling on the erect cock jutting out at attention. You haven’t even contemplated touching yourself yet: your deference to him has returned tenfold – you wouldn’t dare try without _permission_. He takes a deliberate step towards you, eyes flickering up to track your reaction, and then another. In an unfairly smooth motion, he has discarded his own shirt and he’s tugging off his pants even as he crowds you back, pushing you onto the bed.

He climbs on top of you, pushing a hand between your legs and grasping, firmly, at your cock. Here you do cry out, and Angel flashes a pleased smirk at the sound of it. He dips his head down, his lips pressing demandingly against yours, and you surrender to him, letting his tongue past your lips and into your mouth. He swallows down your moans as he ravishes your mouth, stroking your cock with a touch that has gone tauntingly feather-light. You jerk into his hand, and he pulls back slightly, nipping at your lip in reproach. Although your body protests it, you force your hips still, and he rewards you with a series of kisses along your neck and jaw.

You look up at Angel and feel – feverishly – as if he is tearing away your soul once again. He murders you ever-so-tenderly this time, with clever fingers and soft touches you do not deserve. You squirm underneath his weight, and you realize this will not do. You want him to force you down and hold you still as he fucks you; you want it to be hard and painful enough to scrub away the dull, aching longing that’s begun to burrow inside of you. You need this to be a fight – you want to struggle, you want him to dominate you, to defeat you. He refused to deal the final blow earlier, but on _this_ battlefield at least, he owes you some semblance of that end you were promised almost a century ago. Twice now you’ve offered your body to him, and you resent that once again he’s chosen to be gentle with it. He seems to take an undue satisfaction in killing you with this slow, soft pleasure.

“Come on,” you jeer, ignoring that the words come out as a desperate pant. “I know you can do better than that, chief.”

Whatever distant hope you’d entertained of pissing him off enough to get him to shove your legs apart and ram his cock into you is dashed as he gives you an amused smile. “Patience, Lawson,” he purrs. In this light, his eyes look almost ink dark, and you try to force back a gasp at their intensity. You don’t entirely succeed, and you bite your lip to repress any more unwanted noises. You are pinned under his gaze, helpless before him, and as he gives your cock another long stroke from base to tip, his thumb catches lightly on your head, rubbing against your slit. You almost sob from the stimulation, and you wonder if this has all just been a long, cruel ploy for him to torture you. “Be good for me,” Angel tells you, in a low growl that sounds enough like an order that you find yourself obeying on muscle memory alone.

And you do want to be good for him. But you also, badly, need _more_. “Please,” you hear yourself say.

It feels like an eternity, but Angel finally, mercifully, acquiesces. He moves his hand away from your cock, to your hole, and presses one finger to your rim.

“I don’t need-” you try to say. “Just – fuck me.”

He raises a dubious brow, and for a moment you fear he’ll ignore you and slowly, carefully, work you open one finger at a time. You pray he will not, for you are certain you could not endure that. In another undeserved act of benevolence, Angel moves his hand up to his own cock, lining himself up against you. He pushes in, and you raise your legs up to hug around his waist as he does, drawing him deeper inside of you. You don’t make a sound, you are old friends with pain, but this does hurt, a raw, aching burn that stretches you far past the point of comfort. You close your eyes, relishing the pain before your muscles have time to accommodate your sire’s cock inside of you. He hurts you in the exact way you’d wanted as he thrusts deeper into you with tight, controlled motions. This pain is your punishment, your reward, your redemption. You embrace it eagerly. His hips roll and as your body adjusts to him you feel the muscles in his back begin to tense and flex as he increases his pace.

He snakes a hand between your bodies to palm your cock, stroking you and fucking you and kissing you until it is too much, too good –

You cum suddenly, your sire finally delivering to you the release you’ve sought – for a split second you think you can taste oblivion. Then your body surges white-hot as you spill yourself into his hand, tightening around him and shaking with the aftershocks of your orgasm. He finishes not long after, burying his face into your neck, a strangled sound escaping him as his hips stutter and then stop.

He’s lying with you afterwards, and you’re hazy with pleasure in a way you can only distantly remember from ages ago. Absently, you think you’d like a cigarette. Angel’s fingers brush against your spine, and you roll over obediently, meeting his gaze. “Do you forgive me?” you ask, your voice already growing thick with sleep.

He doesn’t respond. His hand, previously at your back, moves to trace around the contours of your lips. “Do you forgive _me_?” he asks instead.

You want to. But your death and undeath were his doing, his responsibility. How can you forgive someone for the crime of stealing your _soul_? You are not sure. But you look into his eyes and decide you’d rather like to find out. “I think I will,” you say. “In time.”

Angel’s eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Not something we’re in short supply of,” he murmurs, drawing you in for another kiss. When he pulls back, he looks almost cheerful. “Cigarette?”


End file.
